Coup Plotters Targeted Turkish President With Daring Helicopter Raid

Commandos failed to capture Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a seaside resort

By DION NISSENBAUM in Istanbul, ADAM ENTOUS in Washington July 17, 2016

A trio of Turkish helicopters filled with rebel forces buzzed the country’s Turquoise Coast below a waxing moon early Saturday as they homed in on their target: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

For the first time in more than 35 years, members of Turkey’s military were trying to forcibly overthrow their government.

As the small group of elite Maroon Beret soldiers on the Turkish Riviera staged their make-or-break mission to try to capture or perhaps kill the country’s democratically elected president, it seemed as if the coup plotters had the upper hand.

In Istanbul, tanks commandeered by the rebels closed Istanbul’s international airport. Soldiers opened fire on Turkish teenagers storming their barricades on a vital bridge connecting the two sides of the city. F-16s attacked Turkey’s parliament building, and helicopters fired at the country’s intelligence headquarters. The country’s top general was detained at gunpoint by one of his top aides.

Yet the commandos who raided the resort where Mr. Erdogan had been staying missed their target. After a brief gunbattle with his presidential security force, the rebels were repelled. Before they ever arrived, Mr. Erdogan had slipped away.

When the sun came up Saturday, it was clear that the coup attempt had failed less than 12 hours after it had started.

The immediate result seems to be the opposite of what the coup leaders intended. Instead of weakening Mr. Erdogan, the coup provided a rationale for him to crack down on the two strongest bastions of Turkish society that had the power to check his political ambitions.

This reconstruction of the failed coup is based on interviews with Turkish and Western officials and Turkish citizens who took part in resisting the takeover. It wasn’t possible to reach the accused coup leaders, including more than two dozen top military officers, who were rounded up across the country.

The events on the ground caught the Obama administration off guard, and the Central Intelligence Agency didn’t see it coming. In the initial confusion, some U.S. officials thought the troop movements could be a response to a terrorist threat. Other officials thought it could be a sham, put on by Mr. Erdogan to strengthen his hand domestically. Intelligence officials told the White House that they believed the coup was legitimate, U.S. officials said.

On Sunday, Mr. Erdogan moved to extinguish the final flickers of armed opposition with an expanding crackdown on more than 6,000 military officers, soldiers, judges, police officers and prosecutors accused of taking part in the botched attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government.

Speaking at a massive public funeral in Istanbul for several people killed while fighting the coup attempt, the Turkish president vowed to clean the country of a “virus” that had infected Turkey.
New tactics

Mr. Erdogan, who has lost the sympathy of Western leaders who object to his broad domestic crackdown on his political foes, likely owes his survival to a counteroffensive that marshaled military might, technology and religion.

He beckoned the Turkish people to take to the streets and defend his government. In an ostentatious gambit, Mr. Erdogan sent a text message to every mobile phone in the country, a job so massive that some of the texts were still being received Sunday.

Loudspeakers at Turkey’s mosques crackled to life in the late-night hours with a call to prayer that was widely understood by many as a call to action.

The dramatic attempt to seize power faltered as Mr. Erdogan’s call to resistance fueled huge crowds already marching against the putsch and rushing to critical locations such as parliament to show solidarity with the government.

It was the first time in Turkey’s history that its citizens rose up to prevent a military coup. Since Turkey was founded in 1923, the military has toppled the government four times. This time, the coup crumbled quickly as key military commanders rallied behind Mr. Erdogan and popular support turned decisively against those staging the coup.

Mr. Erdogan blamed the coup on a political rival, U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, and the president seized the moment to crack down on his political opponents.

The crackdown is the start of what many diplomats, intelligence officials and analysts expect will be a broad and forceful effort to shut down Mr. Erdogan’s opponents and consolidate his already tight grip on power.

The president’s swift counterattack sparked speculation that he might have staged the coup to justify a power grab and keep the military in check.

“We might be watching a very grand theatrical performance, but I hope we’re not,” saidElif Eser, a 23-year-old finance student who opposed the coup but isn’t a supporter of Mr. Erdogan.

Turkish government officials said the coup was the work of a small faction in the military that was poised to be purged for suspected links to Mr. Gulen, now considered the country’s No. 1 enemy by Mr. Erdogan. Mr. Gulen gave a rare series of interviews to deny instigating the coup.

The botched coup began late Friday night when a small caravan of Turkish soldiers drove onto Istanbul’s Bosporus Bridge and shut down traffic heading from the Asian side of the city to its European side.

The bridge was lighted up with the blue, red and white colors of the French flag, a symbol of Turkish solidarity with France for the Bastille Day attack in Nice on Thursday that killed 84 people.

As the troops shut down traffic, people spread photos and video on social media and wondered what was going on.

Yildiray Ogur, a Turkish journalist sympathetic to Mr. Erdogan, said he believed the rumor that the troops were responding to a terrorist threat.

“No one said this was a coup d’état,” said Mr. Ogur, who lives with his wife and daughter on the Asian side of Istanbul, not far from the Bosporus Bridge.

Then it became clear that troops were closing down Istanbul’s two strategic bridges. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirum appeared live on nationwide television with the first confirmation that a coup attempt was under way.

In Istanbul and Ankara, troops stormed Turkey’s state-run television offices and forced a Turkish anchor to read a statement announcing that military leaders, who called themselves the Peace at Home Council, were taking over the government. The military imposed a nationwide curfew, and armed troops moved into key locations across Turkey.

In Ankara, the fighting was more intense. A pair of Sikorsky helicopters commandeered by rebel forces repeatedly opened fire on the country’s intelligence-office gates.

At a military base near the Syrian border, rebel pilots climbed into six F-16s and flew off to carry out airstrikes targeting Mr. Erdogan’s sprawling presidential compound and Turkey’s parliament building.

As the coup unfolded with apparent ease, many people began to wonder about the fate of Mr. Erdogan. People familiar with the situation said the coup plotters decided to strike while he was staying at the Grand Yazici Club Turban on the outskirts of the Mediterranean resort town of Marmaris.

Mr. Erdogan’s security detail decided to move the president to another hotel nearby for his protection. Then he broke his silence to try to rally supporters.

He used the FaceTime app to appear in an extraordinary interview on CNNTurk, urging Turks to resist while the anchorwoman held her phone up to the camera. “Go to the streets and give them their answer,” Mr. Erdogan said. “I am coming to a square in Ankara.”

Mr. Erdogan’s appearance created the impression that he was in trouble and galvanized supporters across Turkey, who flooded the streets to take on the military. Soon after he spoke, loudspeakers at thousands of mosques came to life with an unusual call to prayer that was clearly understood to be a rallying cry for Mr. Erdogan’s supporters.

Mehmet Görmez, Turkey’s president of religious affairs, ordered thousands of imams to recite prayers known as “sela,” ordinarily reserved for funerals and special religious occasions. When issued at other times, the prayers act as a call to arms for the Islamic community.

“When I heard the sela, I prayed and took to the streets,” said a teenage girl who was standing guard outside the presidential palace Sunday.

Soon, protesters were wrestling rebel soldiers in Istanbul’s Taksim Square and laying down in front of tanks at the city airport. Outside the presidential palace, demonstrators picked up sticks and rocks to take on tanks trying to establish control.

One protester was shot in the stomach when he climbed on top of a tank, said Erol Cam,49, who joined thousands of others gathering against the coup.

As angry mobs squared off against the troops, some soldiers said they thought they were participating in a military drill, Mr. Cam said. Police guards at the palace tried to calm the people, with many believing that the soldiers had been tricked, he added.

Soldiers shot demonstrators outside Ankara’s police headquarters. Helicopters opened fire on Istanbul’s Bosporus Bridge, where troops shot at demonstrators who marched on their barricades, killing one of Mr. Erdogan’s top political allies and his 16-year-old son.

For many Turks, Mr. Erdogan’s appeal and the public response signaled the beginning of the end of the coup.

While coup leaders tried to project that they were in control, they weren’t. The military was split, and the coup leaders had led away Turkey’s top general at gunpoint. There appeared to be internal splits in key military units. Many appeared to lay down their weapons in the face of widespread public opposition. Perhaps most important, Mr. Erdogan wasn’t in custody.

When the elite commandos in their three Sikorsky helicopters landed in Marmaris, clashes broke out with members of the president’s security team and local police. A Turkish official said one police officer and a member of Mr. Erdogan’s presidential security detail were killed in the fighting.

Mr. Erdogan’s security detail had already spirited him to safety. Commandos who came for Mr. Erdogan pulled back to their helicopters, one of which malfunctioned, and then took off empty-handed.

While in the air, the aircraft carrying Mr. Erdogan and his small contingent was approached by what they believed were hostile Turkish fighter planes.

The arrival of the planes created panic on Mr. Erdogan’s plane because of concerns that the fighter pilots might be under orders to launch missiles to take down the plane or to try to force it to land so he could be arrested.

The fighters flew close by and seemed to be under orders to follow Mr. Erdogan’s plane.

Military commanders loyal to Mr. Erdogan dispatched their own fighter planes to rendezvous with his aircraft. Once those fighters arrived to escort the Turkish president’s plane, the hostile fighter planes pulled back.

Across the country, Turks found uncommon unity in opposing the coup. All of the country’s political parties, even bitter rivals of Mr. Erdogan, denounced the military takeover.

In Ankara, jets and helicopters carried out repeated attacks on the parliament building, causing significant damage. Visitors’ center windows were mostly shattered, and the buildings facade bore marks of bullet fire and shrapnel. The bombardment wrecked the main hall of parliament and destroyed the prime minister’s office.

Turkish officials said the rebel jet fighters relied on two refueling tankers based at Incirlik Air Base, where the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State carries out daily airstrikes against forces in Syria and Iraq.

As dawn approached Saturday, Mr. Erdogan landed at Istanbul’s Atatürk International Airport, where throngs of supporters overwhelmed soldiers and greeted the president as he stepped off the plane. Even though fighting intensified, the coup seemed to be crumbling.

But the coup leaders weren’t ready to give up. Shortly before 6:30 a.m., rebel jets dropped at least two bombs that landed just outside the presidential palace in Ankara. The ground shook as plumes of smoke filled the sky. Scores of civilians were wounded, said Mr. Cam, who was standing about 250 yards from one strike.

One senior Turkish official said citizens from across the political spectrum could never have imagined the military would open fire on civilians or attack the biggest symbol of their democracy.

In none of Turkey’s previous coups “did the army attack civilian protesters or the symbol of our nation,” the official said. “That was the end.”

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